– a rather random collection –

On Me

Category: Fiction

please understand that you don’t understand what it’s like to live a life full of despair to be filled with hope upon arrival and then to have it turn into an even worse feeling than before because you belong neither here nor there and you’ve left your homeland and you’re not allowed in foreign soil all because of a man who hates immigrants (even though his wife was one too).

let them in because i swear to whichever holy person you pray to that they will absolutely not allow this why are you here which idiots made you be here your ideas involve building a wall for fucks sake how are you mentally stable

don’t act like you’re all high and mighty because suddenly you have a big important seat at the head of a country that used to stand for equality.

now who’s going to come into your ‘great’ country with its iron barricades and rules that only favour the fair skinned because i sure as hell am scared to. I’m only fifteen. My brother is scared to. He’s only ten.

These little kids I met the other day are scared to. They’re four. One of them is American and doesn’t want to go back.

please stop

nobody really wants you there

except for a select few that are as mentally stable as you yourself are.

don’t take out your irrational threats on those who don’t deserve it.

how about you try living in your home country

tearing yourself away

even though there’re bombs and bad people

but its home

and you don’t want to

you want a good life for you and your family

yet at the gates to a new life stands people telling you to go back home even though there’s no home to go back to

Fight me if you disagree – and, honestly, I’d be surprised if anyone did – but Marcus Sedgwick’s The Ghosts of Heaven is a literary masterpiece.

Why? Because:

The characters are so well developed and well written, it’s impossible not to believe you’re actually them. You’re able to connect with the characters you never knew you could connect with, and somehow, each character and story are connected. Every time the characters experience something, it’s almost as if you’re right there with them. I was never more torn apart when anything else happened to the characters.

The stories are written in the way people would’ve written in the time period they’re placed (and if that’s not perfection on the highest level I don’t know what it is). The story from our ancestors’ hunter-gatherer times? Written in a poem, describing exactly the thought process that our ancestors followed. The story from the future? Written with the complicated language we can only imagine being spoken at the time when space travel and sleeping in pods is a thing. It’s so intensely and meticulously crafted, with no disregard for anything.

The spirals just messed me up. Honestly, the most thrilling aspect of the texts was how each story was built on spirals. They weren’t merely placed there, though. They woven into the story, and it was hard to miss them. Yet, they were so prominent and important, it’s a wonder how they didn’t stand out more. Hands down, this was written so well, and it left me thinking for ages. The moment when I worked everything out, I actually jumped up and my mouth was agape. It was incredible.

The diction was amazing. I don’t believe this book is anything less than pure linguistic perfection. Each word completely shifted the course of the story and I am still in awe of how well-versed this was.

It doesn’t have to be read in chronological order – and need I say more? Just another one of Sedgwick’s genius ideas.

Hats off to you, Marcus Sedgwick, for creating a literary masterpiece.